


birdcage

by theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, M/M, Size Difference
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22595056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes/pseuds/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes
Summary: Nobody notices, because he doesn’t care enough to make them notice. A little bard is no surprise, and no one sees something invisible. When they do see him, he is on fire. There’s no room for bones.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 49
Kudos: 514





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> heed the tags please! 
> 
> not romanticizing just projecting. love yall xx

There is something invigorating in not taking up too much space. 

Jaskier has always felt it. He was a very small child, often sick and always scrawny, and it didn’t matter because he could be loud as a full grown man. He has always been screaming, from the moment he was born- crying out  _ “me, me, me!” _ like if he closed his mouth he’d disappear. 

Perhaps he will. It’s a neat trick, to decide that he is nothing and blend into the shadows. He doesn’t exist when he decides not to; he is just a void, or a skeleton, sweet bones propped against a wall in the corner of a tavern, in the bed of some lord. 

There is something invigorating in not taking up too much space. He watches himself in the mirrors he can find, studies the fine turn of his wrists and his ribs and his hipbones. They press out against his skin- when he is singing it doesn’t matter because he’s cloaked in vitality and when he’d nothing it doesn’t matter because nothing matters. An empty belly means he’s done well. He could eat and he chooses not to. Self control. 

Nobody notices, because he doesn’t care enough to make them notice. A little bard is no surprise, and no one sees something invisible. When they do see him, he is on fire. There’s no room for bones. 

-

The Witcher is very large. 

It’s sort of nice, besides the way that everything about him is nice, besides the way that everything about him is hard and sharp and cold. It is easy to be small next to someone who fills a room from the corner. He could stack three of himself in Geralt’s frame, and the thought keeps him up at night. 

The difference between their wrists. He hands Geralt someone, once, and when he sees it his mouth goes dry. Automatic delicacy, by virtue of proximity. There is something invigorating in not taking up too much space, and the void next to a Witcher is never filled, and Jaskier is tiny next to the Witcher when he chooses to be. 

Often he doesn’t. Often he chooses chatter, wild singing, dancing and laughing and fucking. But when he decides that he has been too much, and it’s time to be quiet, there is no place better to do it than by Geralt. 

And so: he eats to keep himself upright, but no more. Scraps of bread, a bit of stew when he feels like indulging. Delicacy is hard won and the easiest thing he knows. Hunger is a constant idea in the back of his head, but it’s easily ignored. The cold, the jut of bones, stranger’s fingers leaving bruises on his wrists and hips and thighs. 

-

Is it a problem if it’s been a whole lifetime in the making?

When he was a little boy, scrawny and sick and singing, a lady came to visit. She was beautiful, tall and and slender, and when she pulled him into her lap he could feel the press of her hips against the silk of her dress. 

Beautiful. The prettiest woman he’d ever seen. Tiny as anything, tiny like a sparrow held in a cupped hand. People had to be careful around her. He  _ wanted _ it. 

He has always wanted to be beautiful. 

It’s different for men, he finds, but that doesn’t matter. It just means more bruises, and those are lovely in their own way. 

-

Sometimes, he becomes half frantic with it. The nature of things is cycles and he cycles from calm to terrified and back over and over and over again. 

Geralt hands him stew. Jaskier pushes it back with a trembling hand and imagines it sticking, building up on his bones, making him unremarkable. He finds someone huge to press him down and fuck him until he bruises. Cycles. 

-

Jaskier stands and sways on his feet. Sparks pop in front of his eyes. He sings so loudly he can feel it bubbling up from his toes, feel it boiling in his fingertips, lancing up from his joints like cold fire. His heart skips beats. He is not enough and he is too much. He finds a mirror, stares into it, traces over his bones. 

Geralt picks him up by the scruff of his doublet so hard Jaskier’s feet actually leave the ground- he looks startled, after, in that controlled way of his. Just a widening of the eyes, a slight tilt to his head. Noticing Jaskier when he doesn’t want to be noticed, when he folds himself up into something small and delicate and innocuous. 

The Witcher is gruffly kind. He doesn’t understand so he cuts Jaskier larger portions of bread, ladles out more stew, gives him fattier bits of meat. He frowns when he doesn’t eat them. 

“Jaskier,” he starts out, voice rough and low and reluctant. He knows the Witcher would like to pretend not to care and he wishes, in this moment, that he would continue. The noticing is fine enough, from Geralt, but the action is hot and sharp and makes him feel sick. “You’re-” 

“I’m grand, dear Witcher,” Jaskier interrupts, gesturing with a fork to distract from the way he’s not eaten anything on his plate. “You, on the other hand- sliced right across the belly, how’s that healing up?” 

Cycles. He cannot bear the weight of anything in his stomach besides drink. He gets shitfaced and collapses and is carried to bed, huge hands almost tender beneath the bumps of his spine. 

-

There is something invigorating about not taking up too much space. The decision to exist and to not exist is his own. 


	2. Chapter 2

Most people are small, compared to Geralt. 

That’s a fact he’d understood before he’d even left Kaer Morhen- it was drilled into him, into all of them. They are mutants, and mutants are not human, and they are strong and large because it helps them on the Path. Their strength is a weapon, and they must use it carefully.

So: humans are small. Even the big ones are fragile, compared to him. Some are smaller than others- children, for example, he avoids- but he has grown used to the particular delicacy of an average person. It’s just a fact, like how Geralt has golden eyes. Humans are breakable, and often predictable, and always impermanent. 

Except Jaskier comes along, and Geralt somehow doesn’t even notice it. 

Of course he _ notices _ it, but it’s background. Jaskier is all larger than life energy, constantly talking and singing and complaining and fucking and just living, in-your-face vitality. He dresses in colors bright enough they hurt Geralt’s eyes and pitches his voice up and down like he’s acting. It distracts from the remarkable humanity about him, enough that when Geralt sees him stripped of all that, curled up asleep on a bedroll, he has to stop short. 

Here’s what Geralt knows about Jaskier: his voice, talking and singing. His eyes, in equal turns grey and blue. His fine clothing that he fusses over. He’s irritating, but he’s brave for all his whining, strong underneath everything. Not so breakable. 

Except. It’s night. The crickets are chirping. Roach is sleeping, her head down, and Jaskier is curled up sleeping too. Geralt has not looked at him sleep before because he hasn’t cared to but he looks now, absently, and sees him without all his layers. Just a human, asleep, in pretty clothes. And he’s _ fragile _, terribly so. All sharp bones and tiny waist, visible where his shirt rides up, and cheekbones that jut. Geralt looks, sees this, cannot stop looking. The bumps of his spine. 

In the morning, Jaskier is Jaskier again, bright and bold and not small at all. But he is also there in the dark, curled up so tight it’s like he’s trying to press himself into nothing. 

Most people are small, compared to Geralt. He has tried to avoid those who are delicate and despite everything Jaskier has slipped through without him even noticing. He doesn’t feel like it and yet he is, when you peer past all that posturing- he’s tiny, all bones and bruises. For all his lanky height and loudness it’s there, waiting for when he turns off his spark. 

It’s not his business. He tries to ignore it. Humans are fragile, and Jaskier is human even though he often feels like more than that. Mortality flows through his veins mixed in with his blood. 

But. 

It’s very strange, the Jaskier that’s awake versus the Jaskier that’s asleep. It makes Geralt realize, like a stone dropping into his belly, that he appears to subside on singing and honey-mead. He doesn’t eat, hardly ever, just picks at whatever he’s given like a bird. Geralt has always eaten anything he could get his hands on, gulping it down untasting, and the dichotomy is not lost on him. 

Obviously he’s attractive. Geralt had noticed that before he’d noticed the frailness, just after he’d noticed the way he never fucking shuts up and just after he’d noticed those lovely blue eyes. 

Obviously he’s attractive. But he’s human, and his waist is so tiny Geralt could span it with his hands, easy, and he’s too small, and he doesn’t fucking eat. He just drinks, mead mostly but tea when he can get it, loaded up with honey. He’d caught him once, eating a loaf of bread so quickly he’s hardly even chewing and looking guilty the whole time. 

A Witcher’s instincts are almost never wrong, and his instincts tell him there’s something past human fragility, but he doesn’t know how to broach the subject. He picks him up to move him out of the way and it sends shivers down his spine. And he tries, he does, to stop caring, and then he tries to give him portions of his own food when that doesn’t work, and then he can’t stop himself from tracking the things Jaskier takes in. Ale, mead, bread. Stew when no one’s watching, always furtive and guilty for some reason. He likes sweets and Geralt can tell he doesn’t want to by the way he stares at them, jaw clenched, like he’s fighting in himself. He bruises easily. Geralt wants to wrap him in a blanket. 

Here is what Geralt knows about Jaskier: he is so much in the light of day or with someone’s attention on him but he can slip away easy as anything. He keeps an eye on him, reluctantly. 

-

When they meet Yennefer, Jaskier is cradled in Geralt’s arms. Geralt feels the weight of what he should be rather than what he is, and the heaviness of it makes him lose his breath. 

Jaskier, irritating and contradictory and bleeding. Laid out on the bed he looks like he’s about to break, and Geralt remembers his songs and knows he won’t. 

Yennefer heals him, for a price. Later, they are sitting together, and Geralt’s shoulders are tense with what he won’t admit is worry. 

“He’s-” she starts, and Geralt shakes his head. 

“I know.” 

“You don’t,” she says, sympathetically. 

“Can you-” 

Yennefer laughs, a little. “I already saved his life, Witcher. I’m not going to meddle in your pet’s brain.” 

“He’s _ not _,” Geralt snaps, angry, and cuts himself off. She’s riling him up, and they both know it. “Leave him out of it, then.” 

“Happily,” she returns, her voice cold. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all of you: hey can you post something that we want to read? 
> 
> me writing this and my merlin crossover even though no one likes my merlin crossover: sorry? i cant hear you? what was that

**Author's Note:**

> im really fucking tired! sorry this is late and short. its chaptered because i want to do a geralt pov or something idk. no one asked for this 
> 
> find me on tumblr at redjewelsforeyes.tumblr.com im currently having a little bit of a breakdown


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